House numbers in the US: I've seen street addresses like "11907 Wicks St". Does that mean the street is long enough to have 11 thousand houses in it, or are the numbers assigned some other way?

My mom is in a rural area and her address is based on distance - from where the emergency vehicle would turn onto the road she is 6.2(02) miles. The hundredths place is used - just up the road my grandfather is 6159, I think the thousandths may be used more for designating which side of the road).

I'm always so confused by how house numbers work in the US and I'm from there!

For example, the house I grew up in was the center house on a U-shaped street. There were two different names for each half of the U, and houses on one half had 4-digit numbers while houses on the other half had 5-digit numbers. Each half of the U had at most 20 houses, and the street does not continue on past that one block in any direction, so I've no idea why all of that naming and numbering mess was necessary.

As a concrete example for those who are not abstract thinkers - my house, in the middle of the U, was addressed something like 12345 Park Drive. The house directly across from us was numbered 9876 Forest Drive, and the house directly to the left of us was 9881 Forest Drive, but the house directly to our right was 12349 Park Drive.

I don't think this is the norm, but in our area, all the streets are on a grid system (it's like an x-y coordinate system, except +y is North, -y is South, +x is East, and -x is West; so, an address that was 2600 W. 3600 N. would be 26 blocks west and 36 blocks north of the center). Newer developments tend to have streets with names rather than numbers, but the house numbers still follow the grid system.

I think every city does things a little bit differently, but it seems to be relatively common that a person's street address indicates both where on the block they live (at least roughly), and where on the length of the street their block is.

My street number growing up was 5605. People often referred to my block as the "fifty-six hundred block of MyStreet". The block on one side was 5500, and the block on the other side was 5700. There were interruptions whenever the street didn't go through or there was some multi-block thing that got in the way, but the first two numbers gave you context about where on the street the block was.

My particular area of the city advanced the house numbers one at a time, with evens on one side of the street and odds on the other. So my next door neighbors were 5603 and 5607. My neighbor across the street was 5604. Other neighborhoods in the same city advanced house numbers by 4, so 5604 would be next door to 5608. But even on those streets, you still had even numbers on one side and odd numbers on the other.

Where I live now, at least in downtown (where the streets really are on a grid), the block number is related to which numbered street it crosses, similar to what Toots describes. We have numbered avenues running east/west through a big chunk of the city that get smaller the further north you go. As you get away from the city center, the streets become more twisty, so the avenues don't always go through or mean much of anything. But in the parts of the city that are on the main grid, the avenues dictate the block numbers for the named streets that cross them.

How often can/should you clip a cat's nails? I've never had a cat before (the kitten apparently does not mind) who'd let me do it, so I really have no clue!

Cats' claws grow from the inside out, in a way. If you clip your kitten's nails, you may see that they are sort of layered like an onion. (This is easier to see on an older cat with bigger claws.) Once you have clipped them, they will stay dull until that layer of claw has been stripped off. Cats scratching on things aren't "sharpening their claws" because claws aren't like kitchen knives. What they are doing is stripping away that dulled layer. You might see what looks like a whole claw caught in the scratching post; the cat hasn't somehow torn off a claw, but just stripped that blunted sheath off in one piece to expose the new sharp layer beneath it.

Which is a long-winded way to say "Whenever they get sharp again." Congrats on having a kitten who will let you do it!

« Last Edit: July 16, 2014, 08:43:25 PM by Elfmama »

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~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Common sense is not a gift, but a curse. Because thenyou have to deal with all the people who don't have it. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

How do you pronounce latte? I've always thought it was lah-tay. Yesterday, I called Cafe Latte to order a cheesecake and the guy who answered rhymed the name, so it was Cuh-fay Luh-tay. Have I been pronouncing latte wrong for the past 20 years?

I know next to nothing about real estate, so I want to know if this is normal. DF and I are looking at buying a house. I requested to view one from an agent and he asked if I would be willing to sign an agreement that I wouldn't work with another company. That seems outrageous to me, especially when all I did was request a viewing. "Hey, I know this is the first date, but let's get married tomorrow!" That's what it feels like to me.

I think it's common for selling a house - you agree to list with one agent at a time, basically - but not at all for a buyer's agent.

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What part of v_e = \sqrt{\frac{2GM}{r}} don't you understand? It's only rocket science!

"The problem with re-examining your brilliant ideas is that more often than not, you discover they are the intellectual equivalent of saying, 'Hold my beer and watch this!'" - Cindy Couture

How do you pronounce latte? I've always thought it was lah-tay. Yesterday, I called Cafe Latte to order a cheesecake and the guy who answered rhymed the name, so it was Cuh-fay Luh-tay. Have I been pronouncing latte wrong for the past 20 years?

No. It might just be the way he talks, too. I don't know if there are any accents that turn /a/ to /u/, but that might be a reason.

How do you pronounce latte? I've always thought it was lah-tay. Yesterday, I called Cafe Latte to order a cheesecake and the guy who answered rhymed the name, so it was Cuh-fay Luh-tay. Have I been pronouncing latte wrong for the past 20 years?